Lili Sarayrah
Lili Sarayrah is a versatile artist centering a career rich in collaboration, curation and curiosity.
Poised on the mic and well-versed in communicating across multiple languages, Lili was raised in the unusual combination of Amman, Jordan and Knoxville, Tennessee. She feels at home building relationships with audiences live through storytelling, themed programs, and integrating literature in performance, thereby bringing elements of experiential design into the live concert experience.
As a violinist, Lili made her solo debut with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra at age eleven, and later appeared as soloist with the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, the Orchestra Now and the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra.
She has performed as concertmaster at Jazz in Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as principal second in Carnegie Hall, with the International Contemporary Ensemble in National Sawdust, Ensemble Signal at the Lincoln Center Festival, Ensemble Evolution at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, with The Who for sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and is a member of the Nu Deco Ensemble.
She has recorded for the Hyperion Label, appears on Colin Self’s album Siblings (named an NPR Best Album of 2018) and played in the Broadway pit for The Cher Show.
Additional highlights include taking part in the Reich Richter Pärt premiere in NYC’s The Shed and leading the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra for the Swiss premiere of Stockhausen’s ‘Inori’ in Lucerne Hall, as well as on tour in the Paris and Berlin Philharmonies and in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
The Boston Globe named a performance she took part in of a string quartet in complete darkness at the Bang on a Can Music Festival as a Top Ten Classical Music Performance.
Through Lincoln Center Stage and as a resident artist she has visited more than 60 countries while curating and performing hundreds of concerts aboard Holland America Line ships, including two circumnavigations of the globe with customized performances for more than one hundred days.
As an educator, Lili has designed residencies in settings that range from an El Sistema-inspired urban music education program to a private college, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Siloé in Cali, Colombia.
She has also given masterclasses at Cornell University, the University of Syracuse, Western Kentucky University and served on faculty for the Chamber Music Institute formerly in residence at the University of Maine.
As an orchestral musician she has performed in the United States and internationally with the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, the Bard Music Festival, the Charleston Symphony, the Amman Symphony Orchestra (Jordan), the Grafenegg Festival (Austria), and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (Switzerland, and on tour) with conductors including Marin Alsop, JoAnn Falletta, Neeme Järvi, Fabio Luisi, and Simon Rattle.
A love of languages has led to the Excellence in English Award from the Interlochen Arts Academy, a Literary Translation Studies Certificate (Arabic-English) through the University of Rochester and the Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State (Washington, D.C. / Amman, Jordan).
Lili has freelanced as a translator, been published in Three Percent, The Markaz Review, and Stillhouse Press, and has appeared on Interlochen Public Radio and Rochester, New York’s WXXI Backstage Pass.
As a project manager, Lili has worked in development for ensembles and at the institutional level, and was the first Social Coordinator for the Marlboro Music Festival. As a Co-Artistic Director of Sound ExChange, Lili co-curated a $100,000 Creative Collision grant from the Farash Foundation to explore the intersection of education, technology, and the arts.
Additional experience includes earning an Arts Leadership Certificate of Achievement through the Eastman School of Music, becoming a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society and receiving the Susan B. Anthony Women’s Leadership and Celentano Excellence in Chamber Music Awards.